


Catfish (Online Relationship)

by motorbike_on_the_avenue



Series: 30 days cheesy tropes challenge [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 30 Day Cheesy Tropes Challenge, Online Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:10:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10738608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motorbike_on_the_avenue/pseuds/motorbike_on_the_avenue
Summary: Dean & Cas have been talking online for years, but have never seen each other.Dean's starting to wonder if Cas is hiding something.





	Catfish (Online Relationship)

**Author's Note:**

> Catfish is on on Monday Evenings in the UK - I don't know if it's the same in America, but that's the day I went for.
> 
> Dean's view of tumblr does not represent my own :) 
> 
> Warning: There is talk about one of the characters being previously homeless due to his family kicking him out because of his sexuality.

The familiar opening of the TV show plays in the background, and Dean settles back on his sofa. He knows he shouldn’t, knows that it only adds to the paranoid thoughts he’s already having.

But somehow, he still finds himself every Monday evening, beer in hand, waiting to watch _Catfish._

It’s become kind of an addiction of his. He spends the whole hour, hoping that the person on the other end is who they say they are – unless it’s such a ridiculous story that no amount of sugar could make him swallow it -, and then yelling at the TV about what a dumb arse that person was for believing a faceless name on the internet.

Dean knows the internet. He spends hours on it every day, looking at a few favourite sites. That’s how he met Cas after all. On the internet.

Dean also knows how easy it is to find out stuff on the internet. That people now days just put personal information whenever they’re asked for it; signing up for websites, photos of their surroundings on Twitter, mobile numbers on Facebook.

And don’t even get him started on Tumblr.

So the fact that there’s someone out there who Dean’s been falling for, for seven years, but yet he’s never even seen him, makes Dean feel like Cas is hiding something from him.

Like maybe he’s a completely different person.

Dean’s phone chimes then, and he knows it’ll be a message from Cas. It’s a different tone from texts or Facebook messages, a different app.

Cas and Dean met on the message boards of a short lived sci-fi show. Cas put up a pretty strong argument that the main character should be with the best friend instead of the actual love interest and Dean found himself slightly swayed.

The show ran for three years. The third year was when it all went to crap, different producers and a whole host of unbelievable story lines where you’d pretty much just tune in every week to see what the writers had come up. There was no point in investing any more – two out of the three main leads had quit by the middle of the third season, anyway.

But Dean and Cas had continued to talk. First on the message boards in private conversation chat windows, and then once notice had been posted that the boards were going down, Cas found another chat room they could speak on.

It was all a little bit 2000s if Dean was being honest. But Cas had maintained for years that he didn’t have a mobile phone, and Dean had just stopped asking for his number. Maybe he could bring it up in conversation again.

 

_Hello, Dean. How did the presentation go?_ Dean’s downloaded an app on his phone for the chat room, which means all the messages he’s shared with Cas can be kept. It’s a good thing really, because while Dean would never admit this, he used to have to go to the library if he wanted to chat with Cas, and print their conversation out, so he could keep them.

There’s a whole shoebox buried under his bed.

**Pretty great, if I do say so myself.**

Dean tells Cas everything. What his job is, – he’s an engineer and small business owner, of the garage he owns -, all about his family, what it was like growing up in Kanas.

_I’m sure they loved it. You’ll get the loan, I’m sure of it. :)._ Cas has put a smiley face at the end of the sentence, and it makes Dean ache. If they were having this conversation on a phone, he could have put an emoji.

If they were having this conversation on a phone, Dean would be able to hear Cas laugh with him. He knew how worried Dean had been about it – asking the bank for a loan so he could extend his business. All Dean had wanted to do was text Cas and tell him, but those feelings were something Dean had to put to bed.

Cas might not even be real. Well, obviously, he was real, Dean knew that, but he could be anyone. Sure, he told Dean things about himself – Dean hadn’t fallen for someone he was just spilling secrets and his inner most thoughts to – about his family and how hard it had been when he’d come out to them. He said only a few of them still spoke to him now days, and Dean’s heart had gone out to him. To not have a family…Dean would hate that.

But these feelings Dean had been having recently. Where he’d wake up from a wet dream, with no real image in his head, just Cas’s name and things he’d said in previous messages ‘ _Dean, if I could hold you now I would,’ ‘You’re like my family’ ‘I love you,’ (_ the last one typed late one night and never mentioned again. That was when things had started to go a bit weird in Dean’s head. He wondered if maybe Cas had meant it for someone else, and that got Dean thinking about how Cas could be married, have his actual own family, kids and a wife, and the jealously that reared up in Dean wasn’t healthy so Dean had to do something.)

There was a girl a month ago. Dean went back to her hotel room, and then stopped kissing her because his phone had gone off and he needed to know what Cas’s reaction to the link he had sent him would be (a tutorial video of how bees made honey. Dean knew Cas loved bees, that they were his favourite animal, but this one had a funny voice over that Dean thought Cas would like. He had.)

The girl hadn’t been so impressed. She’d left and Dean thought he’d feel more miffed than he had been.

And that was the problem. He couldn’t go on, being on his own, with Cas hanging over his head. Cas said he didn’t trust computers, which is why they’d never seen each other, not even sent photos, and it had been years since Dean has asked Cas about a cell phone.

So Dean watches _Catfish._ Finding out that Cas wasn’t the guy he’s bought up in his head – that it’s just someone messing with him, maybe one of the idiots he went to high school with, or it’s someone who’s unhappy with their life and is pretending to be someone else online as a way to live out their daydreams, and is stringing Dean and a whole host of other people along – well. Dean thinks losing Cas by pushing him into something real might be worse than this paranoia.

Because having Cas, even if it is only in a chat window box…well. It’s kind of what Dean needs.

 

It’s another three months before Dean plucks up the courage to ask Cas. He gets drunk, and frustrated because he’s had sex with someone else, but the chat he and Cas had last night just makes it feel like cheating.

Cas had been upset. For the first time in years, he’d seen his mother at one of his brother’s houses. Things had not gone well and Dean and Cas had spent two hours typing back and forth.

Dean wanted to call him. To show him he was there, waiting for him, for as long as he wanted. He wanted to hold him in his arms, except it was really just a concept of holding someone, because he has no idea what Cas looks like. Cas had mentioned in passing that he likes to go running, that he’s got a tattoo on his hipbone (Dean was thinking of getting one and Cas had told him about his experience), and that his brother Gabriel teases him about how his hair always looked messed up, no matter what he tries (and then told Dean the products he’s tried which turn out to be a lot, and had Dean giggling to himself all afternoon.)

So Dean had pulled up the chat window, sat on his floor and typed a message to Cas.

**Cas. I’m tired. I want to see you. To meet you. To hold you, and be able to ring you up when you’re emotional, or when I am. I think I’m falling for you – no, I am falling for you, but I can’t let myself go until I know that you’re real. Either we meet, or we stop this, because it’s stopping me from finding someone else.**

 

It’s two weeks later, and Dean hears nothing.

Well, he thinks, that’s that then.

 

There’s someone watching him. Some guy in the corner with messy dark hair, in a trench coat, and really, really intense blue eyes.

Dean feels his heart fluttering a little bit. It’s been a while but he finally decided he was ready to open himself, to find something real.

Dean’s in the coffee shop just down the road from his house. It’s one of those ones with a stupid name.

Cas had thought it had been really funny when Dean had told him.

But, no. He can’t think about Cas. He’s put him firmly in the past, deleted the app and everything. He hasn’t thrown out the printouts yet, and yes, he did spend another hour in the library uploading screenshots, and printing them out. It’s the last string that needs to be cut, but he’s not quite there yet.

It was seven years after all. He knows it’s going to take him a little bit longer to let Cas go completely. Longer than the month it’s been.

‘Dean?’ The guy in the trench coat has approached him. His voice is low and gravelly, and Dean feels a stirring within him.

‘Who’s asking?’ Dean asks. The man hesitates, and Dean takes a moment to check his body out. Trim but sturdy. Dean feels a hint of some spark within him.

‘It’s Cas. Hello.’ The man – Cas, really? – is frowning a little. ‘I’m sorry for just dropping this on you, but the chat room we were talking on seemed to be malfunctioning.’

‘Yeah,’ Dean says. This is Cas? This frigging hot guy standing in front of him with the voice that’s already doing things to Dean?

Dean is so screwed.

‘You’re Cas? Cas, the guy I’ve been speaking to online for seven years?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re normal! I was expecting…well I don’t know what I was expecting, but you’re telling me there’s nothing weird about you?’

‘I don’t know if I’d say that, my brothers – at least the ones who’re still speaking to me anyway – would say I’m the weirdest person they know.’

‘But there’s nothing that would have stopped you meeting me over the seven years? You could have sent me a photo, or we could have spoken on the phone. There’s not some big secret you were scared of me finding out?’

‘Maybe we should sit down,’ Cas says. He gestures to a small table in the corner, with two empty seats. Dean lets himself be led to one, sinking down into the soft red cushions. Cas takes the other one.

‘I am sorry about the seven years. It’s true that I am very technically challenged.’ Cas pulls a smart phone out of his pocket. ‘I only got this thing a year ago, and only because Gabriel insisted. He said he needed me to be able to do more than text and make phone calls. We work together, and he said it would be beneficial if I could send him photos instead of having to describe things over the phone to him.’ Dean remembers that Gabriel used to work in a cake shop.

‘So you guys are working together? You didn’t tell me,’ Dean says. He clears his throat. Cas doesn’t owe him anything.

‘Gabriel opened up his own bakery a year ago. I wasn’t really working with him then, just helping out when I could. Then he started to realise that while he was a brilliant baker, he wasn’t exactly a great business owner. I started working with him six months ago, but I’m still freelancing translating books.’

‘So, the phone? And the computer?’ Cas gives a little chuckle.

‘I only had a desktop computer, one of those old ones with the monitor and everything. When my parents kicked me out, because of my sexuality, I didn’t have anything to get on the chat room with. I had to use the local library. Things got better when Gabriel said I could move in with him, but I don’t know. I liked the chat room. Like I said, I don’t trust computers. It’s too easy to track people down with them.’ Cas is frowning again.

Dean had no idea. Cas was going through all of that and Dean was thinking that Cas was Catfishing him.

‘I’m sorry. The whole situation with your family must be difficult,’ Dean says.

‘It is. You know the basics of it, because…well. Like I said, I don’t really trust people online. You seem to the exception.’

Okay, so when Dean said he was putting Cas in the past, that was a lie. ‘When I was kicked out, I knew my family would start looking for me. They’d give me a few weeks to stew on being homeless, and then once I’d seen how awful life could be they’d find me and tell me if I agreed to live by their terms, they’d take me back. It had happened to a few of my older brothers and sisters. Some of them came back, some of them didn’t. But I didn’t want to give up who I was, just so I could spend the night in a warm bed.’

Cas was homeless. Cas was homeless, and he never let on to Dean.

And Dean kinda gets it. Because if he’d been in a difficult home situation – that he had none – would he really want to spill that to a stranger on the internet? He’s not sure how long him and Cas had been talking before this all went down, but he guesses a couple of years. Cas wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the TV show with no home. ‘The only one of my brothers who successfully escaped was Gabriel. I spent a couple of years tracking him down – the internet did actually help me there.’

‘Wow, Cas. I had no idea.’

‘I made sure not to tell you. As, uh, chick flicky as this is going to sound – and I know how much you hate them – you were kinda of the only thing that got me through those days.’ Cas hesitates. ‘When I got myself sorted out, into a home and a job translating books, well. I wondered about you. I was worried that maybe you weren’t who you said you were, or that once you found out who I was, you wouldn’t want to speak to me anymore. So when you said I didn’t have some big secret that prevented me from sharing who I was with you, you were wrong.’ Cas smiles a little at him then, and Dean swallows. ‘I’m glad you pushed me, Dean. I’ve been dreading the day you asked for more, but I put it aside. I thought if you were the one hiding something, you’d be content just to keep chatting. But I’m really glad we’ve met. And that you’re still here.’

‘Of course, Cas. I’m not going to run. I’ve wanted to meet you for years, but I didn’t want to push you either. Guess I was scared you’d be someone different.’

They share a smile then, big ones spreading over their faces.

‘So, Cas, I know this might seem a bit fast considering we’ve just met an all, but can I get your number? I’d really love to call you sometime.’


End file.
